Maîtres Anciens (Comédie) 2021

Like Reger – the character Thomas Bernhard placed on a museum bench in front of a painting by Tintoretto, an ‘old master’ if ever there was one – an actor finds himself alone and stranded after a notorious virus closes theatres indefinitely. Here he is, wandering through an empty theatre, walking through pointless backstage areas and stumbling onto a street haunted by masked passers-by. Having convinced a fireman to look after him and his explosives, he tells him and the silence around him of his disgust with, amongst other things, the Heideggerians, the lack of punctuality, people who admire as opposed to respect and the State’s appropriation of children. In the overlapping of film and theatre, despair and survival, 1980s Austria and 2020s France, Bernhard’s text gains fresh resonance, “…and as far as culture is concerned, in this country your stomach is only there to churn.”